More than 75 million people voted in advance...Vote votes must be counted to determine victory or defeat.

This year's U.S. presidential election could take several days to announce a "victory declaration" due to the fact that candidates from both parties were in a very close race until the last minute and there were many early voters.

According to the 2024 U.S. presidential election early voting status compiled by the University of Florida Elections Research Institute, the total number of early voters in the U.S. exceeded 75 million as of 6 a.m. local time on the 3rd.

More than 4,719,000 people voted face-to-face at early voting centers, and 34.374 million people voted by mail, the Elections Research Institute said.

Considering that the deadline for early in-person voting remains and there are mail-in ballots that have not yet arrived at the polls, the statistics for early voting are expected to increase further.

With the election showing a super-close race to the last minute and the number of mail-in ballots, some predict that the winner's decision in this year's presidential election will not be determined until a few days after the election.

The number of early voters for this year's U.S. presidential election fell short of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was at play, but it has increased significantly compared to the 2016 presidential election.

During the 2020 U.S. presidential election, which was held during the COVID-19 pandemic, a total of 114.5 million people voted in advance, of which 65.64 million participated in voting by mail.

During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, 47.24 million early voters, 24.2 million of whom were mail-in voters.

Many states can outline election results on the evening of election day or early the next day, but in competing states or states with delayed mail-in voting processing, it cannot be determined until days later who will take the electors.

In the 2020 presidential election, it was a foggy situation when the final winner would come out on the third day after the election, but it wasn't until the fourth day that each media broke the news of "Joe Biden's election."

This is because the number of mail-in ballots has increased a lot due to the impact of COVID-19, and the race has been very close in Gyeonggi Province.

The reason mail-in ballots delay the tally of the election results is that they need to open sealed envelopes, sort them by constituency, and conduct additional checks on voter signatures.

With this in mind, the majority of states allow the sorting and verification of mail-in ballots before Election Day.

However, seven states, including competing states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, only allow mail-in ballots to be opened and sorted and checked on election day morning.

In particular, Arizona, one of the competing states, has a large proportion of mail-in ballots due to its wide regional characteristics, and mail-in ballots are to be accepted by the day of voting.

As a result, the Associated Press and the Washington Post reported on the 31st of last month that it may take up to 13 days to finish both counting and counting because mail-in ballots start later than other states.

The AP noted that Arizona law allows voters to modify ballots with signatures or other minor issues up to five days after Election Day, which also takes more time to finalize the count.

Many early voting in this year's presidential election is attributed to both Democrats and Republicans encouraging early voting to get supporters to vote.

Former President Donald Trump, who raised questions about the reliability of mail-in voting during the 2020 presidential election, also encouraged supporters to vote early in the presidential election.

However, the percentage of early-voting participants is still expected to be higher among Democratic-backed voters than Republican-backed voters.

In a poll released by ABC News and pollster Ipsos on the 27th of last month, Vice President Kamala Harris received 62% of the support among voters who said they had voted early, and former President Donald Trump had 33%.

In a poll released by the New York Times (NYT) and Siena University on the 25th of last month, 59% of the voters who voted early said they supported Vice President Harris and 40% said they supported former President Trump.